“Nalanda Distinguished Lecture Series” for Spring 2016 started with a lecture by Professor Jens-Uwe Hartmann on January 6, 2016 . The topic of his talk was“Monks, Money, Manuscripts: Buddhism in Gandhara“

Jens-Uwe Hartmann, Professor of Indology at University of Munich, talked about the developments in the region of Gandhara during the first centuries of the Common Era. The region witnessed far-reaching developments in Buddhist thought as well as the artistic style where it adopted Roman models for representing the Buddha and the Bodhisattvas in human form. In his lecture, Professor Hartmann argued that Gandharan Buddhism was extremely successful along the ancient trade routes, commonly known as the Silk Road. Buddhist art and Buddhist doctrine from Gandhara spread first to Turkestan and then further east to China, Korea and Japan along this route.